CVE-2026-57231

Podman: Malformed Image can trick podman run into leaking host environment variables into the container

Description

Podman is a tool for managing OCI containers and pods. From 1.8.1 until 5.8.4, a container image that contains a environment variable with just a key and no value can trick podman into passing that variable from the host into the container. This is made worse by the fact that using an asterisk (*) will cause podman to pass all host variables into the container. So essentially a malicious image can exfiltrate all podman environment variables that are set in the session from where the container is launched. This vulnerability is fixed in 5.8.4 and 6.0.0.

Scores

Weaknesses (CWE)

• CWE-200
• CWE-668

Advisories

• GHSA-4hq8-gpf5-8p68 — Podman: Malformed Image can trick podman run into leaking host environment variables into the container
• GO-2026-6594 — Podman: Malformed Image can trick podman run into leaking host environment variables into the container in github.com/containers/libpod

European references

• ENISA EUVD · EUVD-2026-39807
• GCVE · GCVE-0-2026-57231

CERT-FR advisories

• CERTFR-2026-AVI-0955 — Multiples vulnérabilités dans le noyau Linux de Red Hat · cert.ssi.gouv.fr

Affected configurations (NVD CPE)

• cpe:2.3:a:podman_project:podman:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* ≥ 1.8.1 < 5.8.4
• cpe:2.3:a:podman_project:podman:6.0.0:rc1:*:*:*:*:*:*

Affected products

References

• https://github.com/podman-container-tools/podman/security/advisories/GHSA-4hq8-gpf5-8p68
• https://github.com/podman-container-tools/podman/commit/6c431b73dbf8e4b20b778644d7a80caebdb75050

Sources